The Summoner: (36 page)

The cave
.

Grey dropped to his knees and crawled closer, using the shrub as cover, until he could get a clearer view. The person in front of the entrance came into focus, and every muscle in Grey’s body tightened. Adrenaline coursed through him like a live wire.

The guard was Lucky.

• • •

As soon as Grey left, Viktor bent and opened his bag. It was time, as they say, to enter the fray.

He pulled out a surgical mask and affixed it tightly to his head. The mask would provide a second layer of defense against the palm wine that flowed freely at the ceremonies, and which no doubt contained a powerful hallucinogen. The revelers had sprayed it on Grey and Nya, and he feared the same would be attempted on him. He guessed it was one of the
N’anga’s
defenses against outside intrusion: his followers made sure anyone that looked new or suspicious received a healthy dose of altered reality.

Viktor then took two small pills. The key ingredient in the pills was physostigmine, administered as an inhibitor to certain psychotropic drugs, as well as a treating agent for cases of datura and atropine poisoning—two drugs known to be used by Vodou and Candomble priests.

He was unsure what pharmacology an experienced Yoruba babalawo might employ, but the pills couldn’t hurt. In addition, physostigmine is derived from the Calabar bean, a tropical plant native to Nigeria. The pharmacologist had speculated that the Calabar bean might possess an innate resistance to Yoruba psychotropics.

He trembled at the task that lay before him. What would he see? Would the
N’anga
be a charlatan, a wizard, a devil?

He had to know.

He emptied the bag and reached for the next two items. The first was a sophisticated pair of goggles; he strapped them on and scanned the crowd below. Fantastic colors filled his vision, impossibly vivid fluorescent hues from the infrared spectrum.

Thermography glasses, capable of thermal imaging in the infrared spectrum. Typically used by the military, but also by firefighters, since the glasses are capable of seeing through smoke.

Capable of seeing through fog.

He slid them on his forehead, and then donned the final piece of equipment for the night: the bestial mask he’d saved from the first investigation. It was similar to that of some of the worshippers, but still modest compared to the
N’anga’s
. He slipped it over his head; it was loose enough so he could wear the glasses, but voluminous enough to be an extra layer of protection against hallucinogens.

He took off his coat, revealing torn and ragged trousers, an equally worn shirt, and bare skin of which every inch had been dyed mahogany. He slipped on a pair of black gloves, completing the disguise.

His exposed skin was a light black, splotchy if viewed from up close, but it wouldn’t matter. Everyone would be too busy with the ceremony to notice. By the time they led the captive out everyone would be too intoxicated and focused on the
N’anga
to bother with him.

Or so he hoped.

The
N’anga’s
procession had reached halfway to the circle, and he wanted to glimpse the captive. He threw the empty bag behind a large stone, and headed into the ruins.

He entered amidst the corridors, hut mounds, and small conical towers of the Valley Complex. Some of the walls along the corridors of the Valley Complex, which had seemed smallish from afar and had paled in comparison to the walls of the Great Enclosure, rose far above his head.

He stepped over a crumbling section of wall at the base of the Great Enclosure, at the perimeter of the worshippers. The wall was gigantic. He pushed his way through the crowd as fast as he could without looking suspicious. No one paid him any attention; everyone was too far gone. He felt a rush from the intoxicating surge of drums and chanting, and inhaled the smell of sweat mingled with perverse excitement.

He reached the front line of worshippers just before the captive entered the circle. This time it was a young village girl.
Bastard
.

She carried herself in the same manner as the other captive he’d seen: glossy eyes, wooden steps, hands at her sides. She looked, for all intents and purposes, like a zombie. But if things went as they had before, she was about to wake up. And the Haitian zombies, the Vodou zombies, never woke up. Haitians, he knew, were not afraid of zombies; they were afraid of being turned
into
zombies.

The girl entered the circle. The
N’anga
performed his sacrifice, poured the circle of blood, made the clapping motion—and she came alive. She gawked at the crowd for a few shocked moments, and then opened her mouth to scream. It couldn’t be drugs alone, Viktor thought—he knew of no drug whose effect ended that instantaneously.

He watched her. She tried to flee as the others had, and bounced off the invisible wall. She moved her hands up and down the empty space in front of her, crying out the entire time. Finally she bowed her head, shoulders heaving.

The fog arrived. He thought he knew how the
N’anga
accomplished this—in spite of the teeming chaos, the ceremonies all lasted the same amount of time, with each segment carefully orchestrated by the
N’anga
. Viktor guessed he scattered tiny time-release pebbles into the area of the circle beforehand. The pebbles would dissolve after releasing the “fog,” leaving no trace. He’d seen this used before, by an illusionist in Krakow, for the same purpose—to screen the audience from what was happening inside the fog.

The
N’anga
even had a valid religious reason, in the eyes of his worshippers, for the fog: to shield them from the face of Esu. Viktor also knew that with a hallucinogen, fog was particularly conducive to apparitions and fanciful imagination.

The fog rose to its full height, concealing everything inside the circle. Viktor reached up and moved the thermography glasses into position.

A barrage of strange colors assaulted him, and he squinted. He swiveled until he found an empty circle of space—empty except for the oblong, dull grey shape of the altar. Beside the altar he saw the surreal green and hot pink outline of the girl.

The chanting for Esu ceased, and the girl ran along the edge of the circle, testing her invisible barrier. She gave up trying to escape, and began to scream. Her anguish pierced the air like a spiritual knife.

The girl stopped screaming and then moved in wary circles, as if avoiding someone or something. It must be the drugs, Viktor thought, because nothing else showed up on the thermal imaging.

The crowd died down, and then the
N’anga
gave his customary shout to Esu over the low throb of the drums. Viktor leaned forward. This was it. This was when it happened.

What he saw next caused his throat to constrict and his skin to prickle and curl as if the legs of a thousand centipedes had brushed him.

The girl stopped screaming and walked, calm as fallen snow, to the center of the circle. She was in the trance state again.

She stopped beside the stone altar, then dropped to her knees and pushed on the top. It hinged open. She crawled inside, reached up and replaced the lid, securing herself within.

My God
, Viktor thought—she is completely and utterly under his thrall.

58

G
rey crawled as close as he could. The events of the past few weeks ran through his mind—the adolescent girls at Club Lucky, the desecration of his home, the disappearance of William Addison and the boy’s sister and who knew how many others, the grotesque trade with Dr. Fangwa, Nya’s capture and torture, his own torture—all of this attributable in large part to the man in front of him. He trafficked in death and prostitution, in corruption and human misery.

If the situation was different, Grey might have taken other measures, might have just arrested him.
Might
have. He wasn’t even sure, and the point was moot. Right now, Lucky was guarding the cave so that the
N’anga
could continue to torture Nya.

He exaggerated his breathing, channeling his rage until it became a single, white-hot ember of rational purpose, rather than an all-consuming force. His eyes narrowed, he inhaled one last time, and he was ready.

He sprang out of the bush and rushed straight at Lucky. Lucky was sitting on a block of wood. He caught Grey at the edge of his vision, cursed and scrambled for his gun.

The rule for law enforcement is that if the officer’s hand is on his weapon and it’s unlatched, then the officer has time to unholster, de-safety, raise and aim at center mass if the target is at least twenty-five feet away. Grey knew this intimately, and Lucky had barely taken the gun out of its holster before Grey was on him. Just before they collided, Grey dropped his level and threw his weight into a vicious snap kick straight on top of Lucky’s front knee, driving downward.

Lucky screamed and collapsed like a stepped-on sand castle. At that angle, and with that force on the planted knee, Grey knew he’d disintegrated Lucky’s patella.

The gun was on the ground in front of Lucky. Grey kicked it away as Lucky reached for it. Grey dropped his body weight again, this time smashing his knee into Lucky’s face.

Grey was surprised; that blow would have knocked out most men. Blood flew from Lucky’s nose and across his face, but he kept moving. Rage-fueled adrenaline must have overcome the pain, because Lucky reached up and grabbed Grey, pulling Grey on top of himself as he went down. Grey again got a first-hand account of how
strong
the man was. He felt as if a python had grabbed him.

But this was Grey’s domain. He hooked his ankles under Lucky’s hips, kept his body weight centered on top of Lucky’s chest, and dug an elbow into what was left of Lucky’s right knee. Lucky bucked and screamed, but couldn’t escape.

Lucky tried to cover his face as bottled rage overtook Grey. He dropped his elbow to crush Lucky’s cheekbone, he rocked his face with open-handed blows, he pounded his ribs and liver and kidneys until Lucky’s head became a cabbage and his body a deflated toy.

Grey stopped striking and looked down with baleful eyes, flush with emotion. Lucky blinked and moaned. Grey started, unable to believe he was still conscious.

Grey let Lucky hobble to his feet, unable to stand on his right leg. Lucky managed a smile, lips and teeth stained with blood. “What is it like,” he said, his right leg spasming, face mangled, “to know you will not save her?”

“
Shut up
.”

“He’s torturing her right now-”

Grey backhanded him in the mouth.

“He will kill her,” Lucky spat, “and he will kill you.”

Grey entered from the side, in a burst of movement. He wrapped his right arm around Lucky’s neck, backed his hips into his midsection, and swept Lucky’s feet out.

As Lucky left his feet, Grey accelerated the throw with his legs and hips. Before Lucky hit the ground, he twisted Lucky’s neck on both axes, sideways and up.

Grey heard the crackle of snapping vertebrae.

• • •

Viktor backed away as the fog dissipated. The crowd erupted at the sight of the empty circle. The bodyguards picked up the altar, and the
N’anga’s
entourage filed out of the Great Enclosure.

The
N’anga
and his bodyguards headed up the broader main path towards the Hill Complex. Viktor scurried to the back side of the hill, where a stone-littered footpath wound its way to the inky cliffs above. He climbed in silence through winding corridors of stone, glancing out over the vast and furtive forest stretched out below him. The drums and revelry from below floated on the breeze, but he heard no sound of the
N’anga’s
entourage.

The walkway turned into a narrow, high-walled passage, then spilled out into a courtyard-sized area at the summit. It was empty. He’d beaten the
N’anga’s
party to the top.

The remains of a curving brick wall outlined the moonlit courtyard, as sinuous as the rest of the architecture at Great Zimbabwe. The wall stopped and started as it ran into the boulders that littered the top of the hill, the huge stones themselves forming part of the ramparts.

Viktor heard the scuff of foot on rock, and scrambled back into the corridor. In the darkness, his position offered a perfect vantage point.

He wondered why had the
N’anga
bothered to climb the hill. The site had religious significance—was he going to perform another, more private, ceremony? Perhaps a sacrifice? Viktor grimaced.

The
N’anga
and his bodyguards filed into the middle of the courtyard. The
N’anga
stopped and stood imperiously in the center. He was facing a large boulder opposite Viktor.

The bodyguards set the altar down. Viktor held his breath, but no one moved to open it. They don’t know, Viktor thought.

Everyone except the
N’anga
moved towards the boulder and pushed on it. The gigantic rock swayed back and forth, and then began to roll towards the courtyard.

Viktor’s eyes widened; it had to weigh a couple of tons. The bodyguards strained with exertion as they clung to the boulder. It only moved a few feet—just enough to expose a pinched, roughly hewn doorway recessed into the hillside, its mouth a maw of greedy darkness.

The bodyguards waited until the boulder stabilized, and then moved single-file back the way they’d come. The
N’anga
glided to the altar, pushed down on the top so it sprung open, and helped the girl climb out of her prison. She moved as she had when she’d entered the ceremony: glossy-eyed, golem-like.

That doorway must lead to the
igbo-awo
, Viktor thought. It must be another way into the tunnels. Viktor frowned, unhappy with the dilemma before him. This girl’s life probably hung in the balance of his decision, and possibly that of Grey and Nya—if Grey found a different entrance, he would have no way of knowing that the
N’anga
would be entering from this direction.